Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal_ - Jeanette Winterson [63]
That morning the train I had intended to catch was cancelled, and the next train slowed and slowed with a faulty engine. The slower the train the faster my heart rate. And I had ended up sitting beside someone I knew vaguely, who talked more the less we moved.
I realised that by the time I reached Paddington I would have exactly fourteen minutes to get over to King’s Cross. Impossible. This was London. It was at least twenty minutes in a taxi. There was only one hope and that was Virgin Limobikes – a motorbike taxi service I use.
As I ran out of Paddington Station the big bike was revved up. I jumped on the back and roared and veered through the London traffic, and although I am no pussycat, I had to close my eyes.
Eight minutes later I was on the platform with three minutes to go, and there was Susie – all five foot two of her – in her suede cowboy boots and beads, short skirt, rumpled hair and a Calvin Klein golden coat, looking kind-faced and gorgeous, but jamming her body in the doorway, and part-bossing part-flirting with the bemused guard, because she wasn’t going to let the train leave till I was on it.
I fell through the door. The whistle blew.
We were on our way to the General Register Office with my passport and my two creased and crossed-out bits of paper – the court order and the Baby MOT. I had weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces.
Susie and I are sitting in a functional office of the kind recognisable anywhere in the world; fibreboard and veneer desk with metal legs, a low coffee table set round with ugly chairs semi-upholstered in Martian green and psychotic orange. Carpet tiles on the floor. A filing cabinet and a noticeboard. Big radiator. Bare window.
Susie is among the most skilled psychoanalysts in the world. She is smiling at me as the meeting begins, saying nothing, holding me in her mind. I could feel that very clearly.
The social worker I have come to see is a warm and spontaneous woman called Ria Hayward.
She talks for a while about data protection, and about the various UK Adoption Acts, and about the usual routes of contact. If I wanted to go further there were formalities. There always are.
She looks at my pieces of paper – the court order and the Baby MOT – and she notices that my mother had breastfed me.
‘That was the one thing she could give you. She gave you what she could. She didn’t have to do that and it would have been a lot easier for her if she hadn’t. It is such a bond – breastfeeding. When she gave you up at six weeks old you were still part of her body.’
I do not want to cry. I am crying.
Then Ria passes me her own piece of paper with a sticker over it.
‘This is the name of your birth mother, and this is your original name. I never look at it because I think the adopted person should see this first.’
I am standing up. I can’t breathe.
‘Is this it then?’
Susie and Ria are both smiling at me, as I take the paper over to the window. I read the names. Tears then.
I don’t know why. Why do we cry? The names read like runes.
Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights.
Ria: ‘I have counselled so many mothers over the years who are giving up their babies for adoption, and I tell you, Jeanette, they never want to do it. You were wanted – do you understand that?’
No. I have never felt wanted. I am the wrong crib.
‘Do you understand that, Jeanette?’
No. And all my life I have repeated patterns of rejection. My success with my books felt like gatecrashing. When critics and the press turned on me, I roared back in rage, and no, I didn’t believe the things they said about me or my work, because my writing has always stayed clear and luminous to me, uncontaminated, but I did know that I wasn’t wanted.
And I have loved most extravagantly where my love could not be returned in any sane and steady way – the triangles of marriages and complex affiliations. I have failed to love well where I might have done, and I have stayed in relationships too long because I did not want to be a quitter who did not know how to love.
But